Food for Fuel: Good or Bad?

Starving for Fuel?
By RUTH GIDLEY, Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Using plants to feed our fuel needs may be a great idea, and the biofuel goldrush could be a moneyspinner for several poor countries, but some experts warn people may go hungry as food prices rise.Fans of biofuels give the impression we could soon be running cars on maize, producing electricity with sugar, and getting power from palm oil.Even though the biofuel boom is only just beginning, it has already pushed up the cost of staples in places like Mexico where rocketing tortilla prices have sparked angry protests.
Some experts foresee a permanent change in food economics if farmers scent higher profit in fuel crops than in growing plants to feed people."We're into a new structure of markets," said British food aid expert Edward Clay. "It could have profound implications on poor people."World leaders promised in 2000 to halve by 2015 the proportion of people, estimated at 1.2 billion or a fifth of humanity in 1990, who live on less than a dollar a day and who suffer from hunger.According to the 2006 review of progress toward the goal, an estimated 824 million people in the developing world were affected by chronic hunger in 2003, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia.Oil prices have roughly tripled since the start of 2002 to above $60 a barrel and as oil resources held by Western firms dwindle, biofuels have seemed viable and the message about climate change has gone mainstream.Governments and oil companies are seeking alternative fuel sources and President Bush has made it clear he supports a major shift toward biofuels.Farmers in the United States are raising production of maize, now a lucrative material for biofuel production. Soaring U.S. demand for ethanol -- produced from crops like maize and sugar cane -- has sent maize prices to their highest level in a decade.
Mexicans are feeling the impact. Tens of thousands took to the streets in January when the price of tortillas tripled to 15 pesos ($1.36) a kg. There are about 35 of the flat maize patties that are Mexico's staple food in a kg.Since half of Mexico lives on $5 a day or less, that's no small jump, and President Felipe Calderon -- a conservative who is a firm believer in free markets -- intervened to cap prices.Food costs as a proportion of incomes have been on a downward slide since World War Two, at least in the West. Clay says one of the big questions now is whether biofuels could reverse that process and take us into a new economic era which might be yet harder on the poor.Although he says the current spike in prices will be temporary, he is not convinced food prices will fall back to pre-biofuel boom levels."By next year, (food) prices will begin to fall away," he predicts. "But that doesn't mean they'll ever fall to what they were before."
The United States and Brazil, the world's top biofuels producers, are not the only countries jumping on the biofuels bandwagon. China has joined them and now ranks in the global top four for biofuels output.The incentive to switch land use from food crops to fuel crops mounts with rising biofuel demand, potentially underpinning prices.Also maintaining upward pressure on food prices are the twin needs of economic boomers China and India to be self-sufficient in fuel, but also in food. China's expanding middle classes want to eat more meat, which requires grain production for feed, in turn keeping food prices high.While food prices are likely to be dampened by farmers increasing food crop production in the short term, the scope for switching is limited.Numerous scientists and economists say China and India do not have enough water to increase grain production, whether for animals or fuel.The biofuel boom may also change policies on food aid.Now U.S. farmers can make good money selling grain to make ethanol, there could be a shift in its policy of giving 99 percent of food aid contributions in goods, rather than cash.It might now actually be more convenient for the United States to buy its food aid allotment elsewhere, food aid expert Clay says.The United States is the world's largest food aid donor but has come under heavy criticism, especially from Europeans, who say aid in kind distorts local markets, often takes a long time to arrive and is more expensive to ship than buy locally.Bush has been trying to persuade Congress to change the law to allow up to 25 percent of the country's food aid in cash, but the bill has been rejected under pressure from farmers who did not want to lose what was more or less a subsidy for their grains.
Bush's bill is up before Congress again this year. For the last few years, the world's annual food aid donations have been around 10 million tons, in line with an international agreement in place since the 1960s for wealthy countries to give at least 5 million tons of food annually.Donations fluctuate depending on prices, and relief organizations are already bracing themselves for a likely cut in volumes donated.Clay says when food prices last rose in 1995, parts of the world where food aid was used in development projects -- like school feeding programs -- were the most vulnerable to cutbacks in the following year.The same places -- Bangladesh, Central America, Eritrea, Ethiopia and North Korea, for example -- will probably be first to feel the pinch now.

"Guest workers" or slaves?

Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States
his 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for legislation creating a "legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis." Doing so, the president said, would mean "they won't have to try to sneak in." Such a program has been central to Bush's past immigration reform proposals. Similarly, recent congressional proposals have included provisions that would bring potentially millions of new "guest" workers to the United States.
What Bush did not say was that the United States already has a guestworker program for unskilled laborers — one that is largely hidden from view because the workers are typically socially and geographically isolated. Before we expand this system in the name of immigration reform, we should carefully examine how it operates.
Under the current system, called the H-2 program, employers brought about 121,000 guestworkers into the United States in 2005 — approximately 32,000 for agricultural work and another 89,000 for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries.
These workers, though, are not treated like "guests." Rather, they are systematically exploited and abused. Unlike U.S. citizens, guestworkers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who "import" them. If guestworkers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.
Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2 guestworkers — but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement of their rights is almost non-existent. Private attorneys typically won't take up their cause.
Bound to a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are:
routinely cheated out of wages;
forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;
held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;
forced to live in squalid conditions; and,
denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel recently put it this way: "This guestworker program's the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery."
Congressman Rangel's conclusion is not mere hyperbole — and not the first time such a comparison has been made. Former Department of Labor official Lee G. Williams described the old "bracero" program — the guestworker program that brought thousands of Mexican nationals to work in the United States during and after World War II — as a system of "legalized slavery." In practice, there is little difference between the bracero program and the current H-2 guestworker program.
The H-2 guestworker system also can be viewed as a modern-day system of indentured servitude. But unlike European indentured servants of old, today's guestworkers have no prospect of becoming U.S. citizens. When their work visas expire, they must leave the United States. They are, in effect, the disposable workers of the U.S. economy.
This report is based on interviews with thousands of guestworkers, a review of the research on guestworker programs, scores of legal cases and the experiences of legal experts from around the country. The abuses described here are too common to blame on a few "bad apple" employers. They are the foreseeable outcomes of a system that treats foreign workers as commodities to be imported as needed without affording them adequate legal safeguards or the protections of the free market.
The H-2 guestworker program is inherently abusive and should not be expanded in the name of immigration reform. If the current program is allowed to continue at all, it should be completely overhauled. Recommendations for doing so appear at the end of this report.(by Morris Dees from the Southern Poverty Law Center)

Missionary Letter March 2007

Dear friends and family,

We greet you with affection wishing you all the best. We have wonderful news! God is faithful and a very great God. We know this because all of us have received from Him innumerable benefits. Some days ago Dan was reading the new book by Philip Yancey called Prayer¨and God put the same theme on my heart to preach in the church where we are attending in Puerto Escondido. Äs I was preparing the message I was remembering all of the specific answers to prayer I have received over the years. I have a prayer journal where I have a record of my requests with the date and also the date when each request was answered. I learned this from my mentor in missions who has done the same thing over the years. I could see that the majority of requests since Dan and I were married have been answered. Only the request for a child had a blank box next to it but two months ago I could check that box as answered. Yes, God has answered that prayer request and so far everything is going well and we don´t know how to thank our beloved Father in Heaven for his incredible mercy to us.

As we wait for this miracle child we continue to collaborate with the Rocablanca mission base. This past month we had a surgical campaign led by a plastic surgeon from Corpus Christi, TX. Two baby girls, both a year and a half, had their cleft lips repaired. We also did a circumcision, an amputation and removed two cysts from two young ladies. All the surgeries were successful thanks be to God. This time God provided us a brand new government hospital for the surgeries.

Dan and I are not visiting the mountain villages during my pregnancy so we are able to cover the Base clinic while Laura takes teams to the villages. They have received many blessings as well as come up against some resistance. Recently, the people from one village rose up against a Mixtecan missionary because they accused him of bringing in foreigners to steal their land. But God once again stepped in and impeded their desire that he leave their village. Please continue to pray for brother Florentino. We have been blessed with a medical couple from New York who have been with us for the past two months and have made many visits to indigenous villages.

We have seen the provision of the Lord in our lives in so many ways beginning with the provision of medical help in the clinic during my pregnancy. His timing, as always, is perfect. We rejoice that Dr. Eder, a young doctor from a church in Puerto Escondido, has recently joined our clinic staff full-time. We also rejoice in the provision of a home in Puerto that allows us time and space for rest as well as an extra room for a baby. Finally, for the provision that comes from many of you that allows us to serve God in Oaxaca. Thank you so much for your assistance and God has His reward for you.

We love you and hope to stay in contact. May God bless you richly, Dan & Angelica

CARTA MISIONERA MARZO 2007

Queridos amigos y familiares:

Les saludamos con cariño deseando lo mejor para cada uno de ustedes.
Esta vez tenemos maravillosas noticias. Dios es Fiel y muy muy grande. Todos lo sabemos, porque todos de una u otra forma hemos recibido de sus bondades e innumerables beneficios. Hace unos dias Dan leyo un libro de Phillip Yancey ¨Prayer¨(Oracion) y Dios puso en mi corazon predicar el mismo tema en la Iglesia donde nos congregamos en Puerto Escondido. Mientras elaboraba el mensaje, me puse a recordar las veces que Dios ha contestado nuestras oraciones. Tengo un cuaderno en donde he anotado la fecha en que hacemos la petición y la fecha en que Dios nos contesta. Esto lo empece a hacer desde que mi mentor en misiones me compartio que asi lo hacia por algunos años. Pues bien pude ver que la mayoria de nuestras peticiones desde que nos casamos Dan y yo fueron contestadas. Pero por mas de 4 años, la petición de un hijo era un cuadrito en blanco, sin embargo, el mes pasado pude anotar en mi cuaderno: oracion contestada. Si, Dios nos ha concedido el milagro de un embarazo que hasta ahora marcha bien. No sabemos como agradecer tanta misericordia de parte de Nuestro Padre Amado.
Mientras esperamos a nuestro (a) amado(a) hijo(a) seguimos colaborando con la Mision Roca Blanca. El mes pasado tuvimos una Campaña de cirugía de labio leporino, realizada por un cirujano plastico de Corpus Christi, TX. Dos ninas de un ano y medio, chatinas, recibieron ese beneficio. Tambien se realizo una circuncisión, una amputacion y la extirpación de 2 quistes en dos jovencitas. Todo salio bien gracias a Dios. Esta vez Dios nos dio favor para realizar estas cirugías en un Hospital de Gobierno recien construido.
Ahora nosotros no estamos saliendo a la Sierra. Estamos cubriendo la Clinica de la Base mientras que Laura y varios equipos visitan otras comunidades. Ha habido muchas bendiciones y tambien algo de resistencia. Recientemente en Yucuya’a los habitantes del pueblo reaccionaron en contra del misionero mixteco que esta viviendo entre ellos tratando de sacarlo, pero Dios, una vez mas lo impidio. Pedimos sus oraciones por el, se llama Florentino. A el le reclamaron que llevo a unos hombres que visitaban el pueblo con el equipo medico, a el rio cercano y caminaron por propiedad privada.
Tuvimos la visita de un matrimonio del estado de Nueva York todo el mes de febrero y marzo, lo cual fue una grandisima bendicion, pues los dos son medicos. Ellos pudieron hacer muchos de los viajes misioneros a diferentes pueblos mixtecos y chatitos.
Hemos visto la Provision de Dios en nuestra vida en todos los sentidos. Desde proveyendo mas ayuda medica en estos momentos en que por mi embarazo no puedo moverme tanto como antes. Que increíble, que todo Dios lo tiene planeado en su tiempo perfecto. Tenemos tambien a Eder, un joven medico recien egresado que podra cubrir la Clinica cuando nosotros tengamos que salir para esperar al bebe. Tambien vemos la provision de una casa y los medios economicos para nuestro sostén que Dios nos da a traves de muchos de ustedes. Mil gracias por todo su apoyo. Dios tiene ya la recompensa para cada uno de ustedes.

Les amamos mucho y estaremos en contacto, que Dios les bendiga ricamente: Dan y Angelica.